Wal-Mart Will Track Your Undies

Privacy advocates slam garment chips

(Newser)
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Wal-Mart's plans to insert a tracking chip inside individual pairs of jeans and underwear has privacy advocates worried. The retail giant says the RFID chips will make inventory control much more efficient, but privacy groups warn that the chips—which can be removed, but not turned off—could be misused by criminals or unscrupulous marketers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The tracking chips, which were previously used only on pallets of products, will be attached to individual garments next month. If the trial program is a success, Wal-Mart plans to use the chips on other products. Retail analysts expect other chains will follow suit, and say that beyond improving inventory control and reducing employee theft, using the chips could someday lead to unmanned checkout booths.

There are two things you really don't want to tag, clothing and identity documents, and ironically that's where we are seeing adoption.
- Katherine Albrecht, founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion

here is the totality of the scare factor from the WSJ "Some privacy advocates hypothesize that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers' homes and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought." OMG not marketers knowing what I bought! Save me!

jeebus

Jul 24, 2010 5:21 PM CDT

Kmart still sells underwear, right?

Shawn_The_Bohn

Jul 23, 2010 9:22 PM CDT

If you wear clothes from Wal-Mart you probably need to be tracked. The logic here is sound.

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